So, you’re asking, ‘what did the beach say when the tide came in?’ Hah. It’s funny you’d bring that one up. I’ve been around the block a few times, seen a lot of things, heard a lot of fancy talk. Most of it, just noise, you know?
My Little Experiment with Simplicity
I remember this one time, I was trying to get a point across. People these days, they love to make things complicated. PowerPoints with a million slides, jargon nobody understands. It’s like they get paid by the syllable. I was sitting in one of those endless meetings, felt like my brain was turning to mush. Needed something to cut through the fog. Not another ‘paradigm shift’ or ‘synergistic leverage’. Ugh.
So, I started thinking back. What actually works? What gets a real reaction, not just polite nods? I’d tried some clever wordplay before, you know, the kind that makes you feel smart for getting it. But half the time, it just flies over people’s heads. Or they pretend to get it, which is worse. That’s not communication, that’s just… performing. My ‘practice’ with this stuff wasn’t about becoming a comedian; it was about actually connecting.
This whole ‘practice’ for me started small. I just wanted to see if simple, honest-to-goodness stuff still had a place. I’d be at the coffee machine, or waiting for the elevator, and I’d try out these little one-liners I’d been collecting or thinking up. Some bombed, spectacularly. You get that blank stare, the one that says, ‘Is he okay?’ Tough crowd, sometimes. That’s part of the process, I guess – figuring out what lands and what just thuds.
The Breakthrough Moment
But then, I remembered this old gem. It wasn’t about being a genius. It was just… simple. So, there I was, trying to explain something to this new intern, real bright kid, but totally lost in the corporate speak we were all drowning in. He looked so stressed, poor guy, trying to keep up with all the acronyms and buzzwords we were throwing around.
I paused, looked him in the eye, and I said, ‘You know, it’s like this…’ And then I just went for it. I decided to ‘test’ my theory. I asked him, ‘Hey, what did the beach say when the tide came in?’
He blinked. Thinking, probably, that I’d finally lost it. The pressure was on, my little experiment hanging in the balance. I’d put in the ‘work’ of observing and collecting, and this was a live test.
And then I told him the punchline.
- The beach said: ‘Long time no sea!’
He actually chuckled. A real laugh, not one of those forced polite ones. It was like a breath of fresh air in that stuffy office. For a second, the jargon monster was defeated. It was just a dumb, simple joke. But it worked. It cut through. My ‘practice’ paid off, not in a big way, but in a small, human way. Sometimes, that’s all you need. Forget the fancy diagrams and the buzzwords. Just a little bit of ‘long time no sea.’ Makes you think, doesn’t it? Or maybe it doesn’t, and that’s the whole point.
Anyway, that’s my story with that one. Been keeping it in my back pocket ever since, a result of that little period of ‘practice’. You never know when you’ll need a good old-fashioned groaner to remind everyone we’re still human and that simple things can still make a connection.
